


C'mon and Dizzy Me Up

by Luddleston



Series: VLD Highschool AU [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, First Kiss, Getting Together, Lance is a theater kid, M/M, Mutual Pining, Strong opinions about pizza, non-binary Pidge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 09:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12296088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luddleston/pseuds/Luddleston
Summary: It takes a Disney princess dress, a case of the killer flu, a terrible movie about the apocalypse, and a homecoming dance Keith didn't even attend to get him and Lance together.And most of that—no,allof that—is Lance's fault anyway.





	C'mon and Dizzy Me Up

**Author's Note:**

> I actually have notes to tell you this time. Wow. That never happens. 
> 
> 1\. Lyrics in the title are from _Shake Me Up_ by the Mowgli's
> 
> 2\. There is no Shiro because in this AU, they don't meet him 'til college (but hey, maybe I'll do a college sequel that isn't the two other college AUs I've already written for Klance with Shiro involved). 
> 
> 3\. The Holts were Keith's last foster family; they started fostering him when he was 12 and adopted him shortly after, so that's why he lives with Pidge! There was really no organic way to fit that into the story so I'm putting it here. Not sure if that's better or worse.

When Keith thought about it, the only person he could blame this on was himself. 

When Keith didn't think about it very hard, he could blame Lance instead, which is why he didn't think about his enormous, life-runing crush on Lance very often. 

Except for when Lance sat in front of him in English, doodling on his notes and tapping his foot and his pencil to disparate beats. And except for when they got randomly matched as lab parters in Chemistry and the goggles made Lance's hair stick up and left little red lines on the bridge of his nose. And except for when Lance swung one long leg over the bench of the picnic table at lunch, leaned over the table and into Keith's personal space bubble, and said, "guess who knows what the Spring musical is!" 

So, he sort of thought about it a lot. 

"I'm gonna say, you," Pidge guessed. They had their nose in a World History textbook, getting in some last-minute studying before the exam next period. Knowing Pidge, it was probably the only studying they had done. And, knowing Pidge, they'd get an A anyways. 

"Yeah, me," Lance said, "I asked Ms. Wilson every day for the last week and she finally told me, as long as I promised not to tell anybody else." 

"So, why are you telling us?" Pidge asked. With one hand, they fished around in their mostly-empty bag of Doritos. 

Lance unwrapped his sandwich, peanut-butter and something, and said, "I'm not telling you, I'm just telling you I know." 

"We literally do not care," Keith said, and Lance glared at him over a mouthful of sandwich. 

"It's _awesome,"_ he said. "The musical doesn't get revealed until Halloween, and I know in September, so." 

"So go tell a theater kid and stop talking with your mouth full." 

Pidge snorted. "Yeah, listen to Keith for once." 

"I know you secretly love theater, Keith," Lance grumbled. He looked like he was about to go on some tangent about the value of drama club, until Hunk sat down next to him, cutting him off with complaints about the mile-long lunch line. 

"Dude, you brought that on yourself, it's pizza day," Pidge said, and Hunk sighed. 

"My love for square pizza gets me every time," Hunk said, and Keith hummed in agreement, because he understood that pizza was best if it was square. 

"If pizza don't have pineapple on it, it's worthless," Lance said.

Pidge snapped their textbook shut, yelled, "you _heathen!"_ and leaned over the table to whack Lance over the head with what was a pretty large World History book. Keith just leaned out of their way, because he was very behind smacking Lance over the head, and very not behind pineapple on pizza. Pidge only stopped when Lance screeched loud enough to draw the attention of a teacher, not that any teacher was going to believe there was a tiny sophomore assaulting Lance. 

Lance shook his head and picked up his sandwich again once he was out of danger. "God, Pidge. Anyway, in exchange for my secret theater knowledge, I'm staying behind this afternoon to do costume inventory and, like, clean stuff backstage. So, y'all can wait around or take the bus." 

"Shay can probably give me a ride," Hunk said between mouthfuls of square pizza. 

That caused another disturbance, as Pidge and Lance went, "ooh, Shay's going to give you a ride," in eerie, perfect unison, Keith asked who Shay was, and Lance exploded, because how did Keith not know who _Shay_ was? 

"I don't know everyone in the school, Lance!" 

Lance did know everyone in the school, so he found Keith's argument unreasonable. "She's Hunk's _girlfriend,"_ he crowed, and Hunk buried his face in his hands. 

"She lives nearby, that's all!" Hunk protested. Keith could still see his ears go red, and he smiled a little. Hunk was like Keith, in that he didn't do a whole lot of dating, but unlike Keith, he just got all blubbery and cute when he was in love. As opposed to, you know, kicking his crush in the shins under the table. Which was what Keith was doing.

"Quit embarrassing Hunk," Keith said, while Lance kicked him back. "We'll wait around." 

"I'll mess with the stage lights," Pidge said, flipping through their textbook to find the right chapter again. "It'll be fun. Yeah, Keith?" 

"Whatever. It's either, do homework in my room or do homework at school, and I don't want to walk back to my room." 

Lance shrugged. "Suit yourself, have fun getting haunted by theater ghosts." 

"'S no theater ghosts," Keith grumbled. "I'd know by now if there were." 

"What about that time someone dumped a can of paint on you while you were doing sets for _Twelfth Night?"_

"Lance, that was you." 

— — —

That was how Keith ended up sitting on the floor in the sound and lighting booth, doing chemical equations and watching Pidge try to make a penis out of the spotlights. The academic wings of the school had long since closed, but Keith could distantly hear activity from the gym through the open auditorium windows. 

"How long do you think it takes to clean up backstage?" he asked. 

"Apparently, more than this long," Pidge said. "Alright, look at this one?" 

Keith stood up and peered over the edge of the booth. "I think if your dick looks like that, there's something wrong with you." 

"Well, yeah. But is there some level of immature humor going on here?" 

"My sense of humor sucks," Keith said, "but, I guess, I mean, it looks like a penis." 

Pidge frowned and redoubled their efforts. Even the gym was quieting down, which meant whatever sport practice was happening must've been coming to an end. Keith only knew when track season was, and that was just because he liked to watch Hunk throw stuff. 

Keith shoved his homework back into his backpack. "I'm gonna go see what's keeping them," he said, and, thanks to Pidge, a spotlight followed him all the way down the aisle and up the steps backstage. 

It was mostly dark, because the lighting backstage was generally terrible, but he could see enough from the stage lights to make his way through the overcrowded backstage. The drama club never got rid of props—Keith knew, because set work was mostly repainting old ones. 

He heard giggling from the dressing rooms, and, miraculously, only tripped on one errant set piece on his way back there. The dressing rooms had a large, open section with a row of mirrors on one side and a sharpie-graffitied wall on the other, signed by the cast members of every play since the dawn of Garrison High history (Lance always liked to point out his mom's signature under a production from 1979). Today, the room was full of last season's costumes, mostly ruffly ballgowns, because that's what happens when you perform a play that takes place in a French court. 

Once Keith squeezed between a couple racks into the open space Lance and the unfortunate members of the drama club he'd roped into cleaning with him had left for themselves in front of the mirrors, all he saw was yellow lace. 

It took him a second to figure out what was going on, if only because he couldn't wrap his mind around what he was seeing, which was Lance, covered in layer upon layer of buttercup-colored ruffles. He was posing for pictures, one hand on his hip, the other in his hair, and then he reversed the pose, making his own shutter sounds, probably imagining the linoleum was a red carpet. 

"Uh… hey?" 

"Oh, hey, Keith," Lance said, picking up the front of the dress as he turned so he could step forward without tripping on it. "How do I look?" 

Keith raised an eyebrow, staring at Lance in Belle's dress from last year's production of Beauty and the Beast (Lance had been Lumiere, and had hummed _Be Our Guest_ under his breath every day in geometry for months). "Uh," he said again, and nothing else. The dress wasn't zipped up all the way in the back, and the bust was hanging a little loose, because Lance couldn't fill it out. He still looked amazing with the bright yellow against his dark skin, the bodice of the dress showing off exactly how slim his waist was. 

Keith was into this. Why was he into this? Keith didn't even _like_ girls, so Lance dressed like a girl shouldn't have been a _thing_ for him, but he stepped backward into the shadows to hide how red he was getting. Lance twirled for him, kicking up ruffles, and the three girls cheered him on, still holding up their phones. Keith was probably photobombing all their pictures now. "Why…?" he asked, and Lance just shrugged, swaying a little dizzily from his twirling. 

He jerked his heads at the girls behind him. "Brittany said it was my color, Jessica said it would fit… Keisha is, uh, just taking pictures, I guess." 

"Pretty much," the one who must have been Keisha confirmed. 

"It doesn't really fit," Lance said, lifting his arms. He couldn't pull them all the way over his head, because the sleeves went too tight. He adjusted the bust of it, giggled at his own lack of cleavage, and the words caught in Keith's throat. _You look amazing._ He'd imagined himself saying things like that to Lance on the daily, but he'd never let himself think about it when Lance was right in front of him. 

Keith rolled his eyes, if only to take them off of Lance. "Just. Can we go, already?" 

"Sure, fine. Keisha, you're sending me those pictures, right? Okay, sweet." 

And then, with no warning, Lance reached around behind himself, yanked down the zipper, and stepped out of the dress. Keith just about had a heart attack because he'd successfully avoided having a P.E. class with Lance since the 7th grade and now Lance was just undressing in front of him. God, he may still have been gangly enough that you'd lose him if he turned sideways, but without his usual hoodie, Keith could tell his shoulders had filled out and his chest had gotten wider. He had these dimples above the waistband of his boxers, and Keith looked away, the tips of his ears burning hot. 

Lance pulled his T-shirt and jeans back on, stepped back into his Chucks, and hung the dress up like nothing had happened. The girls weren't paying him any mind, getting their own stuff together and acting like Lance stripping down was completely normal—which, this was the drama club. So, yes. They were probably all used to quick-changes mid-show. 

"You ready to go?" 

"Yeah," Keith said, re-shouldering his backpack and stepping back between the racks of costumes to get himself out of the dressing room and out of the line of sight of that yellow ruffle monstrosity as soon as possible. 

Pidge, who had apparently been getting snapchats from Lance, greeted them with, "hey, Lance, glad to see you found your outfit for prom." 

Lance laughed. "Halloween, maybe." 

— — —

Every morning, Keith and Pidge caught rides to school with Lance, because they were on the way and Lance actually had a car (even if it was 20 years old, always smelled a little like death, and had engine problems every other month). Sometimes, they had Hunk too, but Hunk would ride to school with his parents or with Shay if they had student council in the morning. Or if Hunk decided he needed an excuse to ride to school with Shay. 

Today, though, they were down one Pidge, because the flu had struck the Holt household and Pidge had been out of school since Monday. Keith was pretty sure he was getting it too, but the Statistics exam he couldn't miss kept him from asking Colleen if she could call him off from school. Instead, he sniffled all the way from the Holts' driveway to the school parking lot, wrapped in a long-sleeved shirt, a flannel, and a hoodie (plus a pair of gloves) and looking a little bit like Lance in the winter. It kept him from shivering, though. Mostly. And Lance had the music turned up loud enough that he couldn't hear Keith hacking out a lung. 

He pulled into a parking spot, a little more crooked than usual, and put the car in park, but left it on, turning to Keith, who had his knees pulled up to his chest and a crumpled tissue in one hand. "You look like crap," he said. "Why did you even come to school?" 

"I'll be fine," Keith said, and emphasized how well he was doing with another ninety-second coughing fit. 

"Jesus. Quit getting germs all over my car. You better be glad I got my flu shot," Lance said, and Keith's head was so stuffed full of congestion that he didn't notice Lance moving until his hand was already on Keith's forehead. 

"I don't have a fever," Keith said. Lance had to have noticed how sweaty his bangs were. 

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure you do," Lance said, leaning over the center console, his voice either very soft or very muffled by Keith's congested head. 

"Are you a human thermometer now?" Keith batted Lance's hand off of his forehead. "I'm—" he sneezed twice into his elbow, "—I'm fine." 

"It's barely October, and you're wearing five layers. Even I'm not that bad. At least go to the nurse's office after the test, dude. Please?" 

"Fine, whatever, fine." 

"Sweet." Lance turned the car off and craned around behind him to grab his backpack. When he got out, he pretended like he didn't notice Keith swaying a little when he stood, just clapped him on the shoulder and headed for the door. Lance slowed down his pace, letting Keith catch up to him, and didn't do anything more than raise an eyebrow when Keith leaned against the railing on the stairs a little heavier than a healthy eighteen-year-old would need to. 

Keith looked up at Lance watching him, the gentleness in his eyes, and it perfectly matched the look on Lance's face Keith had imagined last night, when he couldn't sleep because his throat hurt, so he imagined himself asking Lance out, and imagined Lance saying yes. 

Last night's fantasy hadn't ended with Keith puking into the bushes like a hungover cheerleader the morning after Jenny Martin's birthday party, but today's reality sure as hell did. 

"Oh my god, Keith!" Lance yelped, vaulting down the stairs and nearly tripping over one foot. Keith would have laughed at that if he wasn't busy dying. 

Lance put a hand on his back, rubbing in circles while Keith came to the abrupt conclusion that congestion and nausea were a horrible combination. It took him a while to come back down, breathing hard, wishing he could straight-up collapse. The concrete seemed a little rough for fainting-onto, though, and he sat down heavily on the stairs instead, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and groaning a little when he couldn't quite swallow the bitter taste in his mouth. 

Lance crouched beside him, still with a hand on his back. "You okay, buddy?" he asked, and it wasn't Keith's imagination this time, Lance's voice was soft, his fingers slow and careful on Keith's shoulder. 

"Yeah. I mean, no. I'm sorry. I just—ugh, I'm so—you didn't have to." 

"Oh, no sweat, dude. I have four nieces and nephews, I've been puked on so many times, I'm like, immune to being grossed out. Plus, you kept that stuff to the bush." He pointed at the unfortunate hedge, and Keith rolled his eyes. The bush had seen worse. 

"Thanks," Keith mumbled. He was also thanking whatever cosmic deity was watching that they'd been walking in late enough that nobody was around to witness. Lance was bad enough—he seemed alright about it now, but once he recovered, Keith fully expected some teasing for the next forever. 

Lance shrugged. "No problem. You good to move?" 

"Yeah, yeah," Keith said. He hauled himself up, then immediately felt nauseous again, and sat back down. "Maybe not." 

"You don't gotta go that far," Lance said, but the nurse's office seemed like a mile away from the front steps. "You know what? I'll actually just pull the car up, how about that?" 

"The car?" 

Lance looked at him like Keith was asking him what a car was instead of why the hell they'd need one to get across the school to the front office. 

"Yeah, dude. I'm taking you back home, I mean, Mrs. Holt is still there with Pidge, right?" 

"Oh. I was just gonna go to the nurse's office and call Colleen." 

"That's gonna take forever, I'll just drive you," Lance said, his keys already out and spinning on his lanyard around his fingers. Keith couldn't watch him do it too long; it made him dizzy. "Let's go, man." 

"I'm gonna make you late to class." 

"I'm always late to class," Lance said, "plus, you know I just have P.E. first period, and I give literally no shits about skipping." That wasn't wrong. Lance had skipped gym once just because Pidge's biology teacher was out and they were watching Bill Nye in lieu of class. 

"Okay, just. Give me a minute. I want to make sure I don't puke in your car." 

"Wouldn't be the first time somebody's done it, but I appreciate it," Lance said. "Lemme go get Blue." 

Keith dropped his head between his knees, but he could hear Blue's rattly engine turn over as Lance pulled out of his parking space. Once he made his way into the car on embarrasingly shaky legs, Lance cranked up the air vents and let Keith curl himself into a ball in the front seat. "Look out the front window, don't close your eyes," Lance said. "Don't get carsick on top of it all, dude." 

Keith nodded and, for once in his life, listened to Lance. He measured his breaths, counted the seconds until Lance pulled into the driveway, and, miraculously, he did not puke in Lance's car. He was so busy celebrating that minor victory that he didn't notice Lance shutting off the car and coming around to open Keith's door like an old-timey gentleman. Well. If old-timey gentlemen wore oversized drama club T-shirts from freshman year. 

"You don't have to—"

"Nah, I'll walk you to the door. Upsy-daisy." 

Keith wished he could say Lance didn't need to put an arm around his shoulders to get him to the door, but he would've fallen on his face on the driveway if he didn't have Lance to hold him up. Lance didn't just keep him steady, he also rang the doorbell and explained to Colleen what was going on, although Keith was pretty sure from the lack of color in his face and the way he immediately collapsed onto the first chair in the living room clearly said he'd caught Pidge's stupid flu. 

Colleen called the school and made excuses for both of them while Lance hauled Keith to his bedroom. Lance was over enough that he knew which one was Keith's, and he sat down in the desk chair while Keith flopped onto the bed and counted his breaths again while he waited for the world to stop tilting because of the sudden motion. 

"They'll let you retake the test," Lance said, and he was still talking with that quiet voice. Keith could hear Colleen arguing with the school over whether she could excuse Lance from class without being his parent or guardian. Keith felt bad for whoever was on the other end of the line, fighting a losing battle against a Holt. 

"I know," Keith sighed. "Sorry I ruined your morning." 

"Any morning I'm not running laps is a great morning," Lance replied, and he poked Keith in the knee with his foot. "You get better, man." 

"Yeah," Keith said, and a crazy part of him wanted to ask Lance if he'd lay down next to him on the bed and spoon him a little. That was a stupid idea, though, and so Keith just closed his eyes and didn't open them until he heard Lance's footsteps going down the stairs and Blue starting up from the driveway. 

Then, he just stared at the chair Lance had been sitting in for a long time. 

— — — 

Keith and Pidge were both stuck with the flu for the better part of the week, and they took the time to re-watch enough of Mythbusters that Keith had nightmares about Jamie Hyneman's mustache. Given enough time and flu medication, they recovered, and so Lance declared that the following Wednesday, exactly a calendar week after Keith did some minor acid damage to a hedge, was going to be movie night. 

Movie night meant the four of them made a bag of popcorn each and then laid around Lance's living room watching something that was as far opposite from "critically acclaimed" as you could get. Last time, it had been _Sharkboy and Lavagirl._ This time, it was some B-movie about the apocalypse, and Keith was having trouble following the plot because Lance was sitting right next to him and gossipping about homecoming. 

Homecoming, apparently, had been the previous weekend, and Keith neither knew about it nor cared about it. Also, he'd had the flu. 

Lance cared immensely, especially because there had been some major drama caused by Becky Cheng showing up to the dance. Keith didn't know who Becky Cheng was, which was a cardinal sin according to Lance, because she had been the hottest girl in the tenth grade, and Lance had lost his virginity to her after last year's homecoming. And then (tragically) she'd transferred to another school during winter break, and yeah, Keith sort of remembered being jealous because Lance wouldn't stop talking about her boobs or her hair or something. 

He'd tried to block it all out. 

The drama all came from the fact that Becky had been Miranda Zeigler's date to homecoming, and wasn't it crazy that she was a lesbian now? Because (according to Lance) she had given him a pretty great handjob, and Keith stopped listening because he didn't want to start thinking about Lance's dick. Or how he was mildly upset that Becky Cheng had seen—had _touched_ Lance's dick and Keith had only had a long series of uncomfortable dreams about it. 

He went back to watching the movie while Pidge explained the B in LGBT to Lance, hoping the whole thing would be over by the time the film lost his attention again. 

When he tuned back in to the conversation, Hunk was talking about how people on the Food Network needed to stop referring to food items as "sexy," because it made him imagine someone trying to get it on with some arugula, and Keith wondered how he had come to the point where he was grateful for that topic change. 

They watched the rest of the movie with little conversation other than Pidge's, "I mean, I totally believe the part about Stonehenge being made by aliens, but the rest of it is bullshit," and Lance's analysis of the terrible acting. Hunk stole about half of Keith's popcorn, but Keith let him, because Hunk gave him the rest of his peanut M&Ms. 

Keith thought he was safe from having to talk about anyone's sexuality with Lance, but once Hunk and Pidge were passed out on the couch and a very large recliner, respectively, Lance rolled over on his sleeping bag and said, "hey, Keith. Are you bi?" 

"No," Keith said, which wasn't a lie. He scrunched himself down a little further in his sleeping bag—which was borrowed from one of Lance's older sisters, and was lavender. 

"Oh. I just maybe thought that, uh, you were. Because I maybe think that I might. You know. Be bi, that is." 

Lance only talked in those short, cut-off sentences when he was nervous. Keith talked like that all the time, so it didn't bother him, except that he knew it would make Lance even more nervous to confess something like that and not get a response. He pulled his sleeping bag up so that the little corner of it with the zipper on it was under his chin, and it took collossal effort not to start chewing on it. 

"I'm gay," he said, so quietly that for a second, he didn't think Lance heard him. 

"Oh my god, no _wonder_ all the times I've tried to set you up with girls hasn't worked," Lance said, flailing around like Keith had announced he was actually an alien. 

"You haven't tried to set me up with girls." Keith frowned, and realized that he wouldn't have noticed if Lance did. He wouldn't have _cared,_ even if he did notice. 

Lance wiggled a little closer to him, so that he could talk quietly enough that even if Pidge and Hunk were awake, they wouldn't hear. And so that his face was only a few inches from Keith's, and he was thinking, wildly, about a singing Disney crab telling him to kiss the girl—boy, in this case. 

"I like a boy," Lance said. 

Keith's heart squeezed like it was collapsing on itself, because he'd always thought that the only reason Lance didn't like him was because he was straight. And that if Lance had been gay, or bi, or pan or whatever else, he would've returned Keith's feelings, but nope, turned out that even in the world where a bisexual Lance existed, he had a crush on some other guy. 

Keith's sigh ruffled Lance's bangs a little. "Well, I can't help you. I've never had a boyfriend before." 

Lance rolled onto his back, but he was still looking at Keith, his head tilted sideways on the plush shark he was using as a pillow. "I think maybe you could help me out a little bit," he said. 

The relative quiet and the mood were both broken with a loud snore from Hunk. Lance, who seemed to have forgotten about Hunk and Pidge being there, blinked and looked away from Keith. After a beat, he wriggled out of his sleeping bag and stood. "You wanna come outside for a second?" he asked, throwing on a hoodie and walking toward the door without waiting on Keith's answer. 

"Okay," Keith said, but Lance was already out the front door. "Okay," he said again, just to steady himself. Keith grabbed his blanket and followed Lance out onto the porch, where he was sitting on the front stoop instead of on the patio chairs. Keith pulled the blanket around his shoulders and sat next to Lance, watching the streetlamp down the road flicker. 

It was warm for October, and Keith probably didn't need the blanket, except to have something to hide himself in. Lance scooted a little bit closer to him, until their elbows and knees were touching. Lance had his hands shoved in the kangaroo pouch of his hoodie, and when he bumped his elbow against Keith's again, Keith knew it was on purpose. "You alright?" Lance asked. 

"Yeah," Keith said. "Little tired." 

"Me too." Lance put an arm around him, but then pulled his hand back like he wasn't sure he'd done the right thing. Keith realized it was because he hadn't done anything to respond, and Lance probably thought he was pissed off instead of just blown away that Lance was a step away from _hugging_ him. 

He leaned into Lance and could feel Lance relaxing, his hand curling around Keith's shoulder. "Hey, so. I gotta tell you something," Lance said. Keith curled a corner of the blanket in his fingers and scrunched his shoulders up, the somberness in Lance's voice making anxiety boil up in him. 

"Yeah?" he said, so quiet that if Lance hadn't literally been a foot away from him, he wouldn't've heard. 

"So, you know how I said I like a boy?" 

As if he could have forgotten that. "Mm-hm." 

"I, uh. Was talking about you," Lance said, and Keith could feel him tense all the way to his fingertips. "I realized it at homecoming—I kept looking around because I wanted to say something to you, and you weren't there, and I just. Kind of wished you'd been my date." 

Keith's head could have exploded. He dropped his hold on the blanket and grabbed Lance's side instead, getting a fistful of oversized hoodie. "Lance, if you're joking about this, I'll—I swear to god." 

"I'm not joking!" Lance said, still holding Keith's shoulders. "I'm not, I promise, I really do like you. I mean, I don't know _why,_ you're fucking obnoxious, but here I am. Laying my heart on the line. Getting accused of joking." 

"Well, I wasn't going to say I like you too if you were joking," Keith said. This delighted shudder ran through Lance, like he couldn't contain his energy. He pitched forward and hugged Keith, bumping their knees together painfully. 

"Oh my god, oh my god, you're serious," Lance said, "you can't joke for shit, you've got to be serious." Keith could smell Lance's fancy coconut shampoo, could feel through his T-shirt that Lance's palms were sweating. "Oh my god," he said again, "how long did you know?" 

Keith shrugged, and rested his hands on Lance's waist, turning his face into Lance's neck. "I dunno. Eighth grade, maybe?" 

"Are you _serious?"_ Lance asked, leaning back, his warm hands sliding from Keith's shoulders to his elbows. "Why didn't you tell me?" 

"Probably because you would've hated me," Keith grumbled, smushing his forehead against Lance's. 

Lance's sigh rattled in his chest and against Keith's lips. "Shit. You're right, I would've. I'm sorry I was such a little turd in middle school." 

Keith stopped him right there, because if this kept going, he'd have to apologize for his Freshman year scene phase, and that wasn't about to happen. "The worst part was seeing you in that dress a couple weeks back, though." 

"What, seriously?" 

"I'm not kidding! You looked really good!" 

That got a laugh out of Lance and he matched Keith's pose, arms around his waist. "Can I kiss you?" 

"Do you normally have to ask people?" 

"I always ask people! You can't just go around kissing people." Lance looked appalled, like he would've thrown up his hands in disgust if he didn't have them around Keith's waist. 

"Okay, well, you can kiss me," Keith said, and he didn't have time to think about what he'd said and panic, because Lance leaned forward and kissed him once, twice, pulled him in with a hand on the back of his neck and kissed him again. It was brief, gentle, mostly because neither of them could stop laughing long enough to do anything properly. Lance’s fingers snagged in Keith’s hair, but Keith just tilted his head with it and pursed his lips, until he thought he was doing it right. 

Lance kissed his cheek and then tucked his head between Keith’s neck and shoulder, his hand sliding from the back of Keith’s neck down his spine. "I'm crazy happy right now," he sighed. 

"Mm," Keith said, and then, like an afterthought, "me too." 

He wasn't sure if he should kiss Lance again, because maybe Lance was comfy like that, snuggled into his shoulder and all. Instead, he just squished the hood of Lance's jacket in his fingers a couple of times while he thought. "Hey. Are we boyfriends now?" 

"God, I hope so," Lance said, "then I can take you on a date." Keith could feel Lance's teeth a little bit as he smiled against his shoulder. 

"Okay, we are," Keith said, "and you're taking me to get froyo on Friday, okay?" 

"Oh my god, our first date is not going to be at Pinkberry." 

"I don't _like_ ice cream. I'm _compromising._ Besides, you like those cheesecake bite things—also, I'm pretty sure that place on Southeast isn't a Pinkberry." 

"Fine, but if that's the case, I'm counting tonight as our first date," Lance said. "I'm not letting froyo ruin my intricately planned love story." 

Keith didn't think it was planned at all, unless Lance had orchestrated his own bisexual awakening via Becky showing up at the homecoming dance. They sat there for another long moment, and Keith stuck his hands under Lance's hood to keep them warm. Lance had one of his hands on Keith's knee, running his nails in little circles, and it felt nice through Keith's sweats. Lance was good at the physical contact thing. 

"Hey. Tell me a secret," Keith said. 

"Why?" 

"I dunno. Because I want to know something nobody else does." 

"You already know I like you," Lance said, sitting back so he could look Keith in the eye, "that's something nobody else knows." 

"But they're gonna know when you tell everybody in class tomorrow morning." 

Lance blinked and looked at him askance. "You'd be okay with that?" 

Keith shrugged. "Colleen and Sam wouldn't care," he said, "and half the school knows I'm gay." 

Lance mumbled something that sounded a whole lot like, _why wasn't I in that half?_ and bumped his nose against Keith's. "Okay, secret time: the Spring musical is _Hairspray,"_ he said, "now tell me one." 

"Secret time," Keith replied, "I don't care what the Spring musical is, Lance. Zero shits given."

Lance frowned. "I thought you had a secret love for theater or something. You always do set work." 

"No, I do set work because I'm good at art," Keith said, and then he dropped his head onto Lance's shoulder, a little smile creeping onto his face. "And because I wanted to hang out with you." 

"Oh my god," Lance said, for what must've been the millionth time that night. He ducked his head and tilted Keith's face up a little so he could kiss him again, somehow managing to fit their lips together perfectly—shit, Lance was _good_ at this. 

Keith stopped kissing him for long enough to say, "'oh my god,' what?" 

"It just hit me that you actually did like me this whole time," Lance said. 

"I said I did." 

"And I'm also realizing that I've been an idiot, and not noticed this whole time. And that I could have been kissing you for so much longer. And now I'm going to do that again." 

He did, longer this time, his hands going down Keith's ribs on either side to settle at his waist and pull him in closer, until Keith had to scoot over awkwardly and put his legs over Lance's lap. Lance tucked a hand under Keith's knee to hold him steady, his other palm planted on the porch, leaving room for Keith to put his hands under Lance's jacket and hug him close. 

After a few, breathless moments where the two of them just looked at each other and made their best attempts not to giggle like thirteen-year-old girls, Lance took Keith's hands in his. "So, you wanna maybe stop freezing our asses off and go inside?" 

"Yeah," Keith said, "tomorrow's a school day, so." He stretched until his back popped. 

Lance rolled his eyes. "You're sleep-deprived every day," he said. 

"Pidge needs to stop roping me into midnight Mario Party sessions, then." 

"How have you two not killed each other." 

Keith shrugged and shouldered Lance toward the door. They both tiptoed in, Lance trying his best to lock the door without making a sound, but it still clicked. Hunk snored right through it, and Pidge just rolled over, shoving a pillow over their head. 

Keith snuggled down, laying his head on the pillow and waiting on his racing heartbeat to calm down, and Lance did nothing to help by squirming over in his sleeping bag until he was wrapped around Keith like some kind of polyester caterpillar. 

It was a comforting weight, though, having Lance's legs curled over his own, and he fell asleep faster than he thought he would've, what with the repetitive thoughts of, _I have a boyfriend,_ and, _I'm dating Lance_ running through his head. 

Keith woke up to the sound of Pidge's alarm blaring the usual death metal, Lance still curled around him, his hair sticking up in every cardinal direction and then some. Lance yawned morning breath right on him, and Keith retaliated by rolling on top of him, putting his shoulder right in Lance's ribs and everything. Lance whined and flailed around, only stopping to yell, "'Bye, mom!" as Mrs. Sanchez walked out the front door, hollering at the four of them to get to school on time. 

Pidge threw a pillow at the two of them. "Stop runing my morning," they said. 

"Keith's my boyfriend now!" Lance cheered, managing to wiggle out from under him. "Did you hear? He's letting me take him on a terrible date and everything!" 

Hunk mumbled a sleepy congratulations. "Oh, so it's _your_ fault," Pidge said, and Keith just smiled. 

Yeah, the whole thing was his fault.

**Author's Note:**

> I started a new tumblr with ALL my writing on it (rather than having all my SFW fic on my general tumblr and my NSFW fic on my general NSFW tumblr). 
> 
> It's @bambi-simmons, and currently this is the only fic on there, but if you like getting updated by tumblr when I post fic or if you like NaNoWriMo (which I'll be getting into next month), I'll be putting stuff on there.


End file.
